Ubon Ratchathani - Isaan Gps Maps

[jay-uk]

Hello All

I have a GPS hand help pc by Medion which I've used for a few years now with UK/EU maps that you download to the sim card. I wanted to bring it along on my next holiday to use in LOS but do not know where I can buy/d-load a Thai map which would cover Isaan and Ubon areas. If anyone can help pointing me in the right direction it would be great. Without this I'll just have to resort to using a paper map from the local newsagents shop when driving around exploring the city... Thanks.

Jay

Edited October 4, 2007 by jay-uk

[roietjimmy]

Try landinfo.com.

[KHUNDAN]

Hello All

I have a GPS hand help pc by Medion which I've used for a few years now with UK/EU maps that you download to the sim card. I wanted to bring it along on my next holiday to use in LOS but do not know where I can buy/d-load a Thai map which would cover Isaan and Ubon areas. If anyone can help pointing me in the right direction it would be great. Without this I'll just have to resort to using a paper map from the local newsagents shop when driving around exploring the city... Thanks.

Jay

Jay, I use a GPS here everyday as I am the GM for a Thai company here in Bangkok and I travel everywhere throughout Thailand and love using it.

The problem here is that the only place you can get the maps downloaded is here in Bangkok at ESRI Thailand. You have to take your GPS device to them and they will download the Thaimaps and give you free updates for a year, bad news is the cost is 12,000 Baht. Just had a friend from the UK come in with a NUVI 660 and he had to do this also.

ESRI is only opened Monday - Friday 0900-1700..

I got lucky in that about a year ago a Chinese Thai who owns a gold shop in Bangkapi Mall had bought a Garmin IQUE3600 with the English Thai map and he could not use it very well so I got mine preloaded cheap and have never been lost since. I also have a home near Burirum (Krasang) and I have used this GPS all over Thailand. It is really great for finding companies that I have to visit whereever they may be in Thailand. Good luck and if you need more info PM me.

Dan

[jay-uk]

Hi Dan

My GPS runs currently on Navteq software but i presume a pc with gps can run most mapping software or is that wrong?

Cheers.

Jay

[mikethevigoman]

Hi Dan

My GPS runs currently on Navteq software but i presume a pc with gps can run most mapping software or is that wrong?

Cheers.

Jay

The only maps i know of for thailand are garmin and rotweiler,.

[shaggs2004]

Pm Me i will send you all tomorrow

I have all Pocket pc maps for Thailand

Especialy Isaan area i am in Chang what Knakhom Phanom Area

Regards

Shaggs

[Messmann]

Nokia has bought NAVTEQ.

So soon we will have more informations.

Garmin cards for Isaan are no good.

I have Nokia navigater but only map for Bangkok.

[blackcountryboing]

I have a garmin csx60. I am using the Rotweiller maps, $100 for all of thailand and are ver good especially for the money.

[Khun Bob]

Hi - i did a search for Rotweiller in google and it didnt throw up anything - do you have some more info you could post or a link to their site ?

I have a garmin csx60. I am using the Rotweiller maps, $100 for all of thailand and are ver good especially for the money.

[Khun Bob]

My search in google was useful though as i found the following site :

http://www.geocities.com/bkkriders/gps/

This has links to quite a few gps resources for thailand - some a bit old and not working but 2 sites that are particularly interesting are :

http://www.kutu.com/thai/gps/gps.htm

and

http://earth-info.nga.mil/gns/html/cntry_files.html

the above site has a large download of Complete Files of Geographic Names for Geopolitical Areas from GNS

The file can be viewed online and is searchable within your browser

http://gospelgo.com/a/thaiv.htm

This is great as i can search on the name of some small village and get the northings and eastings - also may be with a bit of work this can be uploaded to a gps to get the names of places. Useful for relativity as well - ie you can see what is near a particular place. Issue here is the transliteration of thai - not sure how much though and i would hope a standard system of transliteration has taken place...

[Martin]

The transliteration of 'gospelgo' has some agreements (and a lot of disagreements) with the many different transliterations of the road-sign painters in our area!!!

Transliteration differences can be fascinating in theory, but very frustrating in practice!

When my wife and I went to register our marriage at the Amphoe office, she had to have a new i.d. card with her new surname on it.

A four-way argument erupted as to how to transliterate "Allinson".

Some were so adamantly sure that they were right, and the others wrong, that the big boss had to be asked to come downstairs and adjudicate.

PS Should I have typed 'Amphoe', or 'Amphur'??

[Khun Bob]

Thanks for your reply martin - the more I think about there is so much I could do with the data from the US gov and gospelgo - with respect to transliteration I guess I could produce a data dictionary from the data and this would be useful to identify the transliteration rules they have used and also when a particular place being searched for that is known to exist is not being found with my search phrases.

Now what would be really nice is to have the actual Thai script along with the english too - that would be very useful - that is the real thai spellings - not produced from the transliteration !

Just thought I would mention this on here, I have just acquired the mapking data for thailand and bangkok - this is for pocket pc. I dont have the application yet, and just wondered if anyone had come across this and had any comments on the thai data for it - especially around isaan ?

I had great fun with the gospelgo data and googlemaps - was interesting to see what different quality images are available in the various parts of isaan and bangkok. Parts of sakhon nakhorn have some very good sat pics.

[Martin]

That is a brilliant idea, 'Khun Bob'.

To be able to enter someone's idea of the transliteration of a place name, get the Thai lettering and compare with what it says on a road sign would be brilliant.

My favourite example of the difficulties comes from just 300 metres down our soi, where the sign on "Non Saat Post Office" faces the one on "Non Sa-arde Police Station".

[Gary A]

Hi - i did a search for Rotweiller in google and it didnt throw up anything - do you have some more info you could post or a link to their site ?

I have a garmin csx60. I am using the Rotweiller maps, $100 for all of thailand and are ver good especially for the money.

I use the Rotweiler maps and am quite satisfied with them. They will cost you a $100 "donation", but that's a lot cheaper then the ESRI 12,000 baht. You can use the Rotweiler map on your PC but NOT the ESRI map. You can see the ESRI map only on your GPS. As far as I know only Garmin devices can be used with this map. Make sure your GPS device has at least a 256mb memory card or you won't be able to get the entire Thailand map on it. Rotweiler does have the country split into four sections for Garmin devices with limited memory.

Link;

http://rotweilermaps.com/maps.cfm

[Khun Bob]

Is it that brilliant ? (or am i being naieve...) - producing thai script from a transliteration is a bit shakey and risky at best

Well if you have the actual thai script together with the transliteration it will enable you to determine the rules used and to see if they have been applied consistently (to a degree). Further, it may allow better machine understanding of the sound of a place name.

If the transliteration is independent of the thai script or there is no thai script - then the matching or suggesting method needs to have some understanding of the sound when verbalised - i beleive there is a matching system called soundex that could be worth exploring. But at a much more simple level, if you extract each unique word from all the words presented, then have these sorted as a seperate list, when entering or looking for a place name is would be possible to see what is 'near' (in an acoustic way, not spacial, in this case). This would enable a subset of choices to be produced - if this was combined in realtime with an actual position on the map as the long and lat will be paired, then this could assist the correct selection of the actual place.

In your example of the same place having several versions of a transliterated name, then given that typically, there a few two (or more) places that are spacially very close and have very similar sounding place names, the system could assume with some degree of certainty, that the different transliterations, are indeed the same place ! Naturally, having a lat and long exactly the same would be a dead give away too !

I use to work with a lot of guys that did GIS research, and one of the best pieces of work was an AI system for the placement of names on maps. Well the guys PhD thesis was one of the cr4ppiest I've ever looked over in 10 mins. Still it is better to have some decent work and a poor looking thesis, than the other way around - although if you've done some so-so work and your thesis looks the biz, it helps...

Last time I was i touch with them, they all had good jobs with ESRI in USA...

Now where can I get a way points for Thailand in Thai script ? Actually given this, it must be pretty straightforward to generate any of the standard transliterations from this automatically. I beleive there is a (Thai University) website that catalogues the different thai transliterations.

That is a brilliant idea, 'Khun Bob'.

To be able to enter someone's idea of the transliteration of a place name, get the Thai lettering and compare with what it says on a road sign would be brilliant.

My favourite example of the difficulties comes from just 300 metres down our soi, where the sign on "Non Saat Post Office" faces the one on "Non Sa-arde Police Station".

Edited October 25, 2007 by Khun Bob

[Khun Bob]

Comments Martin, Anyone ?

Is it that brilliant ? (or am i being naieve...) - producing thai script from a transliteration is a bit shakey and risky at best

Well if you have the actual thai script together with the transliteration it will enable you to determine the rules used and to see if they have been applied consistently (to a degree). Further, it may allow better machine understanding of the sound of a place name.

If the transliteration is independent of the thai script or there is no thai script - then the matching or suggesting method needs to have some understanding of the sound when verbalised - i beleive there is a matching system called soundex that could be worth exploring. But at a much more simple level, if you extract each unique word from all the words presented, then have these sorted as a seperate list, when entering or looking for a place name is would be possible to see what is 'near' (in an acoustic way, not spacial, in this case). This would enable a subset of choices to be produced - if this was combined in realtime with an actual position on the map as the long and lat will be paired, then this could assist the correct selection of the actual place.

In your example of the same place having several versions of a transliterated name, then given that typically, there a few two (or more) places that are spacially very close and have very similar sounding place names, the system could assume with some degree of certainty, that the different transliterations, are indeed the same place ! Naturally, having a lat and long exactly the same would be a dead give away too !

I use to work with a lot of guys that did GIS research, and one of the best pieces of work was an AI system for the placement of names on maps. Well the guys PhD thesis was one of the cr4ppiest I've ever looked over in 10 mins. Still it is better to have some decent work and a poor looking thesis, than the other way around - although if you've done some so-so work and your thesis looks the biz, it helps...

Last time I was i touch with them, they all had good jobs with ESRI in USA...

Now where can I get a way points for Thailand in Thai script ? Actually given this, it must be pretty straightforward to generate any of the standard transliterations from this automatically. I beleive there is a (Thai University) website that catalogues the different thai transliterations.

That is a brilliant idea, 'Khun Bob'.

To be able to enter someone's idea of the transliteration of a place name, get the Thai lettering and compare with what it says on a road sign would be brilliant.

My favourite example of the difficulties comes from just 300 metres down our soi, where the sign on "Non Saat Post Office" faces the one on "Non Sa-arde Police Station".

[Khun Bob]

Bump

Is it that brilliant ? (or am i being naieve...) - producing thai script from a transliteration is a bit shakey and risky at best

Well if you have the actual thai script together with the transliteration it will enable you to determine the rules used and to see if they have been applied consistently (to a degree). Further, it may allow better machine understanding of the sound of a place name.

If the transliteration is independent of the thai script or there is no thai script - then the matching or suggesting method needs to have some understanding of the sound when verbalised - i beleive there is a matching system called soundex that could be worth exploring. But at a much more simple level, if you extract each unique word from all the words presented, then have these sorted as a seperate list, when entering or looking for a place name is would be possible to see what is 'near' (in an acoustic way, not spacial, in this case). This would enable a subset of choices to be produced - if this was combined in realtime with an actual position on the map as the long and lat will be paired, then this could assist the correct selection of the actual place.

In your example of the same place having several versions of a transliterated name, then given that typically, there a few two (or more) places that are spacially very close and have very similar sounding place names, the system could assume with some degree of certainty, that the different transliterations, are indeed the same place ! Naturally, having a lat and long exactly the same would be a dead give away too !

I use to work with a lot of guys that did GIS research, and one of the best pieces of work was an AI system for the placement of names on maps. Well the guys PhD thesis was one of the cr4ppiest I've ever looked over in 10 mins. Still it is better to have some decent work and a poor looking thesis, than the other way around - although if you've done some so-so work and your thesis looks the biz, it helps...

Last time I was i touch with them, they all had good jobs with ESRI in USA...

Now where can I get a way points for Thailand in Thai script ? Actually given this, it must be pretty straightforward to generate any of the standard transliterations from this automatically. I beleive there is a (Thai University) website that catalogues the different thai transliterations.

That is a brilliant idea, 'Khun Bob'.

To be able to enter someone's idea of the transliteration of a place name, get the Thai lettering and compare with what it says on a road sign would be brilliant.

My favourite example of the difficulties comes from just 300 metres down our soi, where the sign on "Non Saat Post Office" faces the one on "Non Sa-arde Police Station".

[Khun Bob]

Bump again - anyone ?

Bump

Is it that brilliant ? (or am i being naieve...) - producing thai script from a transliteration is a bit shakey and risky at best

Well if you have the actual thai script together with the transliteration it will enable you to determine the rules used and to see if they have been applied consistently (to a degree). Further, it may allow better machine understanding of the sound of a place name.

If the transliteration is independent of the thai script or there is no thai script - then the matching or suggesting method needs to have some understanding of the sound when verbalised - i beleive there is a matching system called soundex that could be worth exploring. But at a much more simple level, if you extract each unique word from all the words presented, then have these sorted as a seperate list, when entering or looking for a place name is would be possible to see what is 'near' (in an acoustic way, not spacial, in this case). This would enable a subset of choices to be produced - if this was combined in realtime with an actual position on the map as the long and lat will be paired, then this could assist the correct selection of the actual place.

In your example of the same place having several versions of a transliterated name, then given that typically, there a few two (or more) places that are spacially very close and have very similar sounding place names, the system could assume with some degree of certainty, that the different transliterations, are indeed the same place ! Naturally, having a lat and long exactly the same would be a dead give away too !

I use to work with a lot of guys that did GIS research, and one of the best pieces of work was an AI system for the placement of names on maps. Well the guys PhD thesis was one of the cr4ppiest I've ever looked over in 10 mins. Still it is better to have some decent work and a poor looking thesis, than the other way around - although if you've done some so-so work and your thesis looks the biz, it helps...

Last time I was i touch with them, they all had good jobs with ESRI in USA...

Now where can I get a way points for Thailand in Thai script ? Actually given this, it must be pretty straightforward to generate any of the standard transliterations from this automatically. I beleive there is a (Thai University) website that catalogues the different thai transliterations.

That is a brilliant idea, 'Khun Bob'.

To be able to enter someone's idea of the transliteration of a place name, get the Thai lettering and compare with what it says on a road sign would be brilliant.

My favourite example of the difficulties comes from just 300 metres down our soi, where the sign on "Non Saat Post Office" faces the one on "Non Sa-arde Police Station".

[Gary A]

Garmin USA is now offering the ESRI Thailand map on a micro card for $119.99. They have listed the GPS units that it will work with. Gadget Trend has now lowered their price for the ESRI Thailand map from 12,000 to 7,000 baht. The Gadget Trend ESRI map is supposed to work on all the Garmin GPS units. I have ordered the map for my 2610 Street Pilot from Gadget Trend because the Rotweiler map has many glitches with that unit. The Rotweiler maps work fine on my hand held eTrex Legend CX. Email from Garmin tells me that the older units interpret maps differently and there is no fix to change that. Rotweiler maps work on your home PC so that alone is good reason to use those maps rather than ESRI.

[Khun Bob]

Hi Gary A

On the micro card is just data i guess, so it must be possible to get at this and convert it ? I wonder if it could then be ported to a GPS package on a PC ? There seems to be a big price difference between US and Thailand, if it is the same thing.

Also, anyone know if there is a freely available list of waypoints for Thailand in the Thai language ?

Cheers

Garmin USA is now offering the ESRI Thailand map on a micro card for $119.99. They have listed the GPS units that it will work with. Gadget Trend has now lowered their price for the ESRI Thailand map from 12,000 to 7,000 baht. The Gadget Trend ESRI map is supposed to work on all the Garmin GPS units. I have ordered the map for my 2610 Street Pilot from Gadget Trend because the Rotweiler map has many glitches with that unit. The Rotweiler maps work fine on my hand held eTrex Legend CX. Email from Garmin tells me that the older units interpret maps differently and there is no fix to change that. Rotweiler maps work on your home PC so that alone is good reason to use those maps rather than ESRI.

[Messmann]

Look at Google world and you will find many good maps in Thailand.

I'm using Nokia Navigator and can download all the maps I want.

It shows my GPS position very good and it's easy to find the main roads.

However not all the facilities in many maps are awailable but will certainly be added in near future.

I think this is the best you can find in thailand.

[Gary A]

Hi Gary A

On the micro card is just data i guess, so it must be possible to get at this and convert it ? I wonder if it could then be ported to a GPS package on a PC ? There seems to be a big price difference between US and Thailand, if it is the same thing.

Also, anyone know if there is a freely available list of waypoints for Thailand in the Thai language ?

Cheers

Garmin USA is now offering the ESRI Thailand map on a micro card for $119.99. They have listed the GPS units that it will work with. Gadget Trend has now lowered their price for the ESRI Thailand map from 12,000 to 7,000 baht. The Gadget Trend ESRI map is supposed to work on all the Garmin GPS units. I have ordered the map for my 2610 Street Pilot from Gadget Trend because the Rotweiler map has many glitches with that unit. The Rotweiler maps work fine on my hand held eTrex Legend CX. Email from Garmin tells me that the older units interpret maps differently and there is no fix to change that. Rotweiler maps work on your home PC so that alone is good reason to use those maps rather than ESRI.

I think they have those maps locked and protected as well as they possibly can. Even Rotweiler maps need the code number for your unit and that map will only work on that unit ID number. Gadget Trend needs your unit serial number as well as the unit ID number. The US maps for my unit can be used on my computer the same as the Rotweiler maps so yes, they are very different from the ESRI furnished maps. The ESRI map comes on a CD but it cannot be loaded on your computer. You need a card read/writer to transfer from the CD to the memory card.

The only coordinates I have seen are on the Udon Map forum and they are in English. I'd guess that as these things become more popular there will be directories giving coordinates for different places. I have used Google Earth to get coordinates for different places.

[soidog2]

http://shop.garmin.com/accessory.jsp?sku=010%2D11027%2D00

[Drowsy]

Nokia has bought NAVTEQ.

So soon we will have more informations.

Garmin cards for Isaan are no good.

I have Nokia navigater but only map for Bangkok.

I also have a Nokia Navigator, on the Dvd that follows it has map for all of Thailand, anybody know if its any good? Lisence cost 50 Auro, and its Route66 software.

[Gary A]

Nokia has bought NAVTEQ.

So soon we will have more informations.

Garmin cards for Isaan are no good.

I have Nokia navigater but only map for Bangkok.

I also have a Nokia Navigator, on the Dvd that follows it has map for all of Thailand, anybody know if its any good? Lisence cost 50 Auro, and its Route66 software.

One good indication of how good and detailed the maps are are the size of the download. The Rotweiler map of all of Thailand WON'T fit on a 128 MB memory card. I think the ESRI map is at least that big and maybe a few MB bigger. I have seen some maps of Thailand advertised that are only a few MB. If a map only has the highways, I can use my road atlas. I have downloaded some of the free area maps of Thailand and they are pretty much useless.

[Messmann]

I can see that Google have changed the maps from Navteq to teleatlas and the maps for Thailand are no good any more!

Anyway I am happy with my maps from navteq on my Nokia navigator... I do not know why it changed...!

[jay-uk]

I also have a Navman N60i which is used in my car here in UK. Does anyone know of software/Thai Mapping for this unit without paying an arm and a leg. Thanks.

[khunandy]

Hi - i did a search for Rotweiller in google and it didnt throw up anything - do you have some more info you could post or a link to their site ?

I have a garmin csx60. I am using the Rotweiller maps, $100 for all of thailand and are ver good especially for the money.

I use the Rotweiler maps and am quite satisfied with them. They will cost you a $100 "donation", but that's a lot cheaper then the ESRI 12,000 baht. You can use the Rotweiler map on your PC but NOT the ESRI map. You can see the ESRI map only on your GPS. As far as I know only Garmin devices can be used with this map. Make sure your GPS device has at least a 256mb memory card or you won't be able to get the entire Thailand map on it. Rotweiler does have the country split into four sections for Garmin devices with limited memory.

Link;

http://rotweilermaps.com/maps.cfm

Like Gary A I use Rotweiler maps, havent had anything to complain about yet and the $100.00 donation is good value as far as I am concerned. I use them in a Garmin Street Pilot for the car and also a garmin Etrx Vista hand held.